Today, we were running a special at work that I had previously been told was an online-only special. After the general manager corrected me, I used the joke excuse of, "It's my first day". The customer replied, "I can tell". I've worked there two years and I'm the assistant manager. FML

No matter the position, you should always try your best with customers. A simple and courteous apology would've sufficed, but through joking that way, you opened yourself up to that remark. Professionalism goes a long way.

No matter the position, you should always try your best with customers. A simple and courteous apology would've sufficed, but through joking that way, you opened yourself up to that remark. Professionalism goes a long way.

Work is one thing, outside is another. I work in a high end fine dining restaurant, so I have to be professional at work. That has nothing to do with my overall personality outside. You're there to do a job, and to do it exceptionally well.

I work at a job that requires me to be upbeat and joking and a fun person, so saying something like "it's my first day" in a joking manner would be something I would say if I did something like that. Not every job is a serious "high end" restaurant job. You're allowed to joke around with the customer while being professional, and that's what OP was trying to do but got shot down.

I don't understand what op was hoping she would say. If he told her it was his first day why wouldn't she believe that? Especially seeing as he didn't know the sale properly. She's not thinking an assistant manager won't know the sales. I think this is a ydi. He made the joke (that she would obviously think he was serious about) and got a comment back. He opened himself up to that.

I would rather an employee of anywhere joke around with me and use humor then just a stotic, generic, "professional". The customer sounds rude, of course I don't know the tone or anything so it may have been more lighthearted than I am imagining.

I don't think she was expecting him to be perfect. She would naturally expect an assistant manager to know about the conditions of the sale, and the fact that he said it was his first day seemed to explain the error.

She was still rude. The polite response would be something like "don't worry everyone makes mistakes" or even "its no problem Im just glad everything got sorted out." Just because you open yourself up to rude comments doesn't mean that they are any less rude.

If you have to rely on lying to get good tips, you are a bad server. Yes, some people are just shitty tippers but if you are a good server the majority of people will tip accordingly. I would never lie to a customer, but you do you.

It clearly says that he had been previously told that it was online only.
So there is definitely a communication break down and OP can't be blamed for not questioning it to begin with since it's such a common thing to have online only special deals.

I don't think that meets the criteria to be considered a smart ass. You sound like one of "those" customers. You do realize most places are training their employees to be upbeat and fun, making jokes and actually talking to the customer right? The reason is most people like it.

Having fun with other human beings is enjoyable to most people, and service employees are human, not generic service robots.

For some reason people take the term "the customer is always right" literally. No. It means that even if the customer is wrong, you should still find a compromise to help them or just fix the problem without arguing or incident.

Like if a customer ordered food from a restaurant and ordered wrong or forgot to specify something, and the food they got wasn't quite what they wanted (wanted extra pickles or add some sauce to their burger or something and didn't get it because they forgot to actually tell the person taking their order) and come back to complain, just fix their food. It's not worth the possible loss of customers, especially if they told their friends and family, they told theirs, it happened again to one of those people and it reinforced the honesty of the story they heard so they told their friends, ect.

In short it means the customer pays 100% of your paycheck so just apologize and make it right.